


change of heart

by BlackJacketsandPens



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Gen, gonna fill the braig tag somehow, headcanon heavy, wrote this for a prompt on my rp blog but it got long enough for a oneshot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-09
Updated: 2018-07-09
Packaged: 2019-06-07 13:20:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15220013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackJacketsandPens/pseuds/BlackJacketsandPens
Summary: Five years, he's been on this world, the Garden -- alone, out of time, the loss still feeling like yesterday. Five years spent refusing to get attached. But...a child changes everything.Headcanon-heavy Castle Crew oneshot, mostly featuring Braig.





	change of heart

Five years. That’s how long he’s been here. Sometimes it feels like those five years have stretched out into an eternity, each day like a year on its own -- and sometimes it feels like he’s only been here for moments, here in this world not his own. Never his own.

Objectively, it’s a nice enough world, he supposes. Warm summers, not too hot, and winters with snow but nothing too freezing. The gardens were vibrant and the fountains always ran crystal clear, and the people were happy. Darkness hadn’t touched it, not once. There was hardly anything to fear, and it was peaceful. If he were anyone else, perhaps...he could find it in him to be happy here. Part of him wished he could.

But...he can’t. He can’t be happy here. Not when the pain of his loss is like a hole in his heart, a black hole sucking everything else into its depthless void. It’s been years -- seven searching, plus five here, over a decade, and...it still hurts as if he’d lost them all just yesterday. His wife dead, her sister vanished into the darkness, and his son, his little boy, ripped from his arms as they were flung to opposite ends of the worlds. His family, all gone, and his world with it. How could anything fill that hole? How could he _want_ it to? Wouldn’t that be betraying them, betraying Aisling and Siobhan and Jasper? On his world, it was taught that family came first. Blood and marriage-bond before all else. How could he ever forget that, ever stop searching?

But when the worlds tore themselves to pieces in the final cataclysm of that children’s war -- he was thrown here, space and time folding themselves around him and dropping him here. A man out of time, on a strange world...and no longer any way to go home, if home even existed. The worlds were separate now, no way back. No way out.

He’s spent the last five years a shadow in the castle -- the king was kind enough to let him stay, curiosity and fascination with their guest from another world going a long way to earn him hospitality -- just prowling the halls, aimless and sullen. The two guards and the scientist (he remembers their names sometimes, when he’s sober) try to help, but he pushes them away. No, he won’t get attached. Won’t make this a home. Won’t betray his family. Even if sometimes it hurts enough that he can’t get out of bed, even if more nights than not he has to be carried home from one bar or another after he’s drunk his weight in whiskey. Even if the castle, all its balconies and open air pathways and ledges and heights, is...the wrong kind of tempting, sometimes.

He’s bullied into the practice yards sometimes, when he’s sober, the king or the scientist insisting that he make sure he can control the magic he’s seemed to develop -- that, he can’t entirely argue with. He’d overdone it once, ripping space around him (and a few bottles of booze) apart to get to the highest point of the castle in seconds, in spits and bursts, and spent two days unable to _stop_ \-- his magic out of control, blacking him out for what felt like years a time and sending him all over the castle like a firecracker let off in a small hallway, bouncing everywhere and unable to hold somewhere long enough to ground him. The blind terror of those two days had cut through the fog and given him enough sense to agree to at least make sure that didn’t happen again. But other than that…

Other than that, he wants nothing to do with this world, these people. He wants to be left alone. If that means drowning in liquor inch by inch and folding in on himself, if that means avoiding the world and sleeping too much, too hollowed out and empty to care -- the hole in his heart devours all around it -- then...that’s fine. It’s fine.

If there’s nothing left of Braig Tallow but this sullen and bitter shell wrapped around a broken heart clinging onto what he’s lost...then so be it. He won’t betray his family.

* * *

There’s a window seat in the library he likes -- the view is alright and the sun hits the cushions in just the right way, and he’s thin and bony enough that he can fold perfectly right into it and nap. The only other person that comes in here is the scientist, and he’s content to leave him alone (the only one who does), so...it’s welcome, when he’s too tired to do anything but the walls of his room feel suffocating.

He’s tired a lot of the time, too bone-deep tired to get out of bed, but at least he can teleport. Makes it easier to get here.

Footsteps stir him from his doze, and dull brown eyes flicker around the room. He blinks, frowning faintly, and then closes his eyes again when he doesn’t see anyone. Not his problem. Technically nothing was, since he was just a freeloader ( _a drunk, a good-for-nothing, why was His Majesty even putting up with him,_ he’s heard it all already), but...mm. Didn’t matter.

The very faint thud and the breathy yelp, though, that catches his attention. He sits up, awake enough now to pay attention, and eyes scan the room again. “S’anyone there?” He asks, his voice still thickly accented and raspy from how little he speaks. There’s silence for a moment, and then a faint sound like someone’s trying to get his attention without words. It’s coming from the upper level of the library, so without even really consciously thinking about it, he levers himself up and heads up the stairs. He was pretty sure it wasn’t the scientist, after all-- he wasn’t one _not_ to say anything if he needed help. So who…?

His question is answered quickly when he gets to the landing, and a dozen more take its place. Forefront of them, though -- why is a _child_ here? He’s small, younger even than-- than Jasper was, three or four at the most, with a mop of slate gray hair and clearly second-hand clothes that give the impression no one here actually knew what they were doing with a child. He blinks. The boy’s sitting on the floor with a very large and heavy book next to him, pulled from a couple shelves above him; it doesn’t take much to figure out what happened, and before he can stop himself Braig is crossing the distance to kneel next to the boy and look him over.

“Hey, y’okay?” He asks, hand brushing the boy’s head to make sure there’s no bump. “Heard that from downstairs. Y’coulda asked if y’needed help with somethin’...”

The look the boy levels him is one he _had_ to have learned from the scientist, and he shakes his head once, pointing to his mouth. What... _oh_. “Y’can’t…?” The boy shakes his head again. Well, that explained why he hadn’t heard much besides footsteps and the thumps…

“Well,” he says slowly. “What’re y’doin’ here, kiddo?” He’s not sure what he means the question to be, but the boy gives him that look again and points at the book he’d been trying to retrieve. Despite himself, his lips twitch, and he scoops the boy and the book up as he stands, the boy inhaling in surprise and wrapping arms around his neck.

He almost drops the book at that, feeling like someone had kicked him in the gut, but he swallows the jolt of pain and takes them back downstairs to where the table is, nudging a chair out with a foot and putting the boy on the table, before putting the book down beside him. It’s a book of fairy tales, he notes, and something in him jolts again, stomach twisting. “....y’wanted t’read this, then?” He asks, and the boy nods, pointing to what he now realizes is a bookmark tucked in the pages. He opens it to the middle, and glances at the boy. “Can y’read this?” He asks, and the boy goes pink and looks away.

He stares from boy to book a moment, the stomach-twisting feeling now here to stay, and… “Is anyone been takin’ _care_ ’o ya, kiddo?” He asks after a moment. “Or have y’been jus’...here?”

The boy shakes his head, pauses, nods, and then shakes his head again, frowning. He waves his arms a little, frustrated, and Braig sighs, holding out his hand palm up. “Do y’know yer letters?” He asks, and the boy nods. “Spell it out on my hand, then.”

The look of realization and then pleasure on the boy’s face punches his already twisted guts dead center, and he swallows as the boy’s tiny finger starts carefully tracing letters. _Even watches me._ The boy tells him. _King does too. But busy a lot. Read book at bedtime. Busy now._

It takes him a few moments to parse that -- so the king and...Even? Is that the scientist? They took him in, but they’re so damn busy all the time that...they probably didn’t even _think_ about that, he thinks bitterly. Whatever it was, spur of the moment hospitality like for him, and then just...forget when something else comes up? Well, for him, that’s fine. He’s a drunk and a layabout and barely willing to be in the same room as any of them let alone talk to them, but this is a _child_ \--

He stops himself mid-thought, then, realizing in horror where that thought is going. No. No, he can’t. He _can’t_. He can’t do this. He shifts in his seat, halfway to standing before he glances at the boy’s face again, startled and confused, and the book open on the table -- the book one of the others had started to read to him and forgotten about, the book he’d tried to read himself because no one was free to...if he hadn’t been here…

He feels sick and shaky and like he wants to run away, because he can’t he can’t he can’t, but-- but if he doesn’t, then who else will? No one here knows how to care for a child, clearly, or is just too busy to, and...and he--

He can’t leave him like this.

That thought sinks like a stone into his chest, and the knot in his guts eases with it. Whether or not he gets attached, it-- he can’t just leave a kid like this, not taken care of. Aisling wouldn’t forgive him.

“...Hey, mouse,” he says slowly, sitting down again and pulling the boy into his lap. The boy blinks in surprise, though he’s not sure if it’s because of the gesture or the nickname. “I’m not busy,” he tells him, reaching for the book. “So y’were here last, eh? Righ’...lessee. Oh-- ‘ey, I know this’un.” His lips twitch again as he looks down at the boy, who’s smiling now. That hurts, he has to admit, but...there’s something else with the hurt, something he can’t remember feeling in a long time, something a little...warmer.

* * *

“Ienzo! Ienzo, are you here?!”

Even hurries into the library -- honestly, he’s angry at himself. He’d been dragged into the labs all day, and normally that wasn’t a problem, but with Ienzo living at the castle...Ansem had again forgotten quite all about his most recent pet project and Even...well, he should have been more forceful, he supposes, but Ansem’s bad habits feed his own, and they’d both been sucked in. Now it was late, much later than he’d wanted, and...damn it, he’d just left Ienzo on his _own_ all day. They hadn’t managed to rearrange the guards’ schedules yet so Dilan and Aeleus had some time during the day to keep an eye on the boy, so...he was only three! Powers, this was--

He stops in his tracks.

Ienzo was in the library, all right...and so was Braig.

Now, the man was...unreliable at best, everyone knew that. Even had attempted to pity him, at first, this lost and lonely man from another world entirely, here without anyone or anything he’d known and clearly having suffered some deep loss, but...when all the man had done was be bitter and sullen and snappish, avoiding everyone when he wasn’t drinking himself to death? Pity was in short supply, so he’d just decided to ignore the man right back.

But...here he is in the library with Ienzo. The first thing that hits Even is a great deal of concern -- the man’s a drunk and a misanthropic bastard on his best days, how could one ever trust him with a _child?!_ \-- but then he stops to listen and look, really do both.

There’s a couple books on the table -- fairy tale anthologies, from the looks of them, and Even thinks one of them is the one Ansem had started reading to Ienzo a few nights ago before he’d forgotten -- but they’re all closed, face down as if they’d been finished, and instead Ienzo is sitting cross-legged on the table, and Braig is...telling a story?

“...The giant brought out ‘is battle-axe,” he was saying, his arms moving with the tale, “which had a blade seven acres in size -- that’s real big, s’like, a coupl’a _farms_. Fin was ready with his sword, though, an’ then they started t’fight...”

Even leans against the bookcase to watch despite himself. He’s never seen Braig like this. There’s _life_ in his eyes, in his motions, and is that...is that a _smile_ on his face? A real one, not sharp and bitter and insincere? It changes him, Even thinks. He looks...alive. Not like he’s one foot in the grave and just waiting for the other to join it. A sort of melancholy still hangs on him, but he looks like one of the living.

He waits for the story to finish -- and Braig tells it better than Even could have, a fairy tale of a brave hero and all that nonsense, rather sweet in how outlandish it is -- and then clears his throat. “Hello, you two,” he says, feeling a tad like he’s interrupting something.

Braig and Ienzo turn to look at him in unison, and the smile is still on Braig’s face -- it fades a little upon seeing Even, but holds on. It really does change his entire face, he thinks. Makes it look much younger, much softer. “‘Ey, Even,” he says, and Even is fairly sure that that’s the first time he’s ever heard the man say his name. “Did y’mean t’leave th’ little guy on his own all day?”

Even winces. “I...no,” he says. “But…” There’s really no excuse and he knows it, and Braig does too. “Alright, so we weren’t prepared for this,” he says with a sigh, approaching and picking Ienzo up, who snuggles close. “But...his parents passed away, and his father was a friend of Master Ansem’s…”

Braig winces, and something dark passes across his face. “All alone, is he?” He asks. “I...guess th’king likes takin’ in people like that, eh?” He stands, and Even is reminded that he’s actually rather short. “...I don’t have much t’do,” he says finally, eyes on Ienzo rather than Even. “If y’ever need someone t’watch ‘im when ye an’ the king are busy…” Finally, his eyes do flick up to meet Even’s, and the scientist is genuinely -- and pleasantly --surprised to find life still in them. Like there’s a man in that shell again, one coming back to life. “I’m here.”

“You are at that,” Even agrees. Ienzo smiles at him, then, and Even makes a decision -- one he would never have made before today, before this moment. “I was going to take Ienzo to get some dinner, but I don’t suppose you’d like to join us?”

Braig blinks, and he watches the gears in his head turn. “I…” He begins, and eyes look down at Ienzo again before he looks up. “I would,” he says finally, and Even smiles at him, startled, relieved, and oddly glad.

“Well, come on, then, Braig,” he says. “Dilan hates to be kept waiting, you know. Oh-- well, you might not, given how much you’ve been avoiding us.”

He turns, then, and there’s a laugh behind him as they walk out of the library -- it’s rusty and startled, but real, and Even can’t help but join him in it.

“I...I’ll work on that,” Braig says, and to his surprise...Even believes it.

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, so, someone commented on my other oneshot that the world needed more Braig fic, so I aim to please. Is this headcanon heavy? Oh, absolutely. Do I care? Nope!
> 
> For reference, this takes place about 5 years before Birth by Sleep, and by the time those five more years pass, well...he's the Braig we know and love. He did try! But, y'know...when a devil offers you a deal to get back what you've lost? No amount of healing can keep you from doing something stupid as shit. Even if you know better than to deal with the fair folk.
> 
> As an aside!! The fairy tale Braig was telling is [this one](https://fairytalez.com/fin-maccumhail-and-the-knight-of-the-full-axe/) retold by Jeremiah Curtin, from Fairytalez.com


End file.
